Peter Richard Forrest

ABSTRACTBy the Many Categories problem, I mean the prima facie violation of Ockham’s Razor by realists about universals: there is, it might seem, just too much variety. Thus, David Armstrong posits both properties and relations. He also theorises about determinates of determinables. Another influential realist, E. J. Lowe distinguishes non-substantial from substantial universals. Yet again, both Armstrong and Lowe include in their ontology abstract particulars in addition to universals. My aim in this paper is to offer a unification of these categories using an operator-theory. First, I show how operators provide a theory of abstract particulars of relations and of impure relational properties. Then, using impure relational properties I derive the Fregeanion Principle. After some metaphysics of mathematics, I provide a theory of determinables. Finally, I consider kinds and substances.

In his “Are Properties, Particular, Universal, or Neither?” Javier Cumpa argues that science not metaphysics explains how properties are instantiated. I accept this conclusion provided physics can be stated using rather few primitive predicates. In addition, he uses his scientific theory of instantiation to argue for Neutralism, his thesis that the “tie” between properties and their instances implies neither that properties are particular nor that they are universals. Neutralism, I claim, is a thesis that realist about universals have independent reason to accept and their opponents have reason to reject. So, neutralism is not neutral on the topic of whether properties are universals. Nor is Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation as naturalistic as he claims. I argue that although compatible with Ontological Naturalism, his theory provides a precedent for the non-naturalistic emergence of mental properties. Finally, I argue that because his theory requires a simple physics it presupposes a more rationalist epistemology than that of Methodological Naturalism.

Conceivability is, I say, prima facie evidence for possibility. Hence, we may count the cost of theories about possibility by listing the ways in which, according to the theory in question, something conceivable is said nonetheless to be impossible. More succinctly we may state a principle, Hume's razor to put alongside Ockham's. Hume's razor says that necessities are not to be multiplied more than necessary. In this paper I count the cost of David Lewis's modal realism, showing that many of the objections are replied to by Lewis only at the cost of multiplying necessities.

Consider the things that exist—the entities—and let us suppose they are mereologically structured, that is, some are parts of others. The project of ontology within the bounds of bare mereology use this structure to say which of these entities belong to various ontological kinds, such as properties and particulars. My purpose in this paper is to defend the most radical section of the project, the mereological theory of the exemplification of universals. Along the way I help myself to several hypotheses: the existence of merely possible worlds; that particulars have thisnesses; and that mereology is far from classical. Moreover, the way I characterize instantiation might be judged too complicated to be plausible. At the end of the paper, I reply to these objections based on complexity.

A controversy in political philosophy and applied ethics concerns the validity of duty‐imposing powers, that is, rights entitling one person to impose new duties on others without their consent. Many philosophers have criticized as unplausible any such moral right, in particular that of appropriating private property unilaterally. Some, finding duty‐imposing powers weird, unfamiliar or baseless, have argued that principles of justified acquisition should be rejected; others have required them to satisfy exacting criteria. I investigate the many ways in which we regularly impose duties on one another without prior consent. I show that doing so is not weird, and I offer criteria which demarcate the reasonable from the worrisome aspects of duty‐imposing powers.

Przypadek czy sprawczość? Odpowiedź na „Divine Providence and Chance in the World” Dariusz Łukasiewicz wyróżnia sześć pojęć przypadku, spośród których jedne są spójne z ludzką wolnością rozumianą po libertariańsku, a inne nie. W tym eseju argumentuję na dwa sposoby, że teiści powinni odrzucić przypadek ontologiczny i odwołać się zamiast tego do nieredukowalnej sprawczości w odniesieniu do zdarzeń, które nie są opatrznościowo wyznaczone przez Boga. Moje argumenty zależą od jednoznacznego rozumienia twierdzeń, że Bóg jest kochającym sprawcą oraz że istoty ludzkie, w swoim najlepszym zachowaniu, są kochającymi sprawcami. Łukasiewicz zakłada milcząco, że takie twierdzenia cechuje niewłaściwy antropomorfizm. Opowiadam się za antropocentryzmem i będę bronić jednoznaczności.

This chapter argues that we have inconsistent intuitions about the structure of space (or spacetime, or some stuff, the aether, that fills space or spacetime). A contradiction is obtained from eleven premises, each of which is either directly intuitive or supported by intuitions. The use of so many premises results from the desire to exhibit as clearly as possible the places where one might decide some intuition is to be undermined. Nonetheless the argument for inconsistency is straightforward: our intuitions support the existence of a _supersponge_, namely a region of less than the total volume but not disjoint from any connected part of space of positive diameter. But the complement of a supersponge is an intuitively impossible region. Yet, intuitively a region of less than maximal volume must have a complement. So some intuition must be abandoned.